Generally used to denote a human being of extraordinary intelligence, but historically indicating a superior class of entities holding an intermediate rank between mortals and immortals. The latter meaning appears to be the signification of daemon, the corresponding term in Greek. It is probable that the whole system of demonology was invented by the Platonic philosophers and grafted by degrees onto popular mythology.
The Platonists, however, professed to derive their doctrines from the "theology of the ancients," so this system may have come originally from the East, where it formed a part of the te-nets of Zoroaster. This sage ascribed all the operations of nature to the agency of celestial beings, the ministers of one supreme first cause, to whose brilliant image—fire—homage was paid.
Some Roman writers referred to the genius as "the God of Nature," or "Nature" itself, but their notions seem to have been modified by, if not formed from, etymological considerations more likely to mislead than to afford a clue to the real meaning of the term. At a later period they supposed almost every created thing, animate or inanimate, to be protected by its guardian genius—a sort of demigod who presided over its birth and was its constant companion until death. Censorinus, who lived about the middle of the third century, noted: "The genius is a god supposed to be attendant on everyone from the time of his birth…. Many think the genius to be the same as the lars of the ancients…. We may well believe that its power over us is great, yea, absolute…. Some ascribe two genii at least to those who live in the houses of married persons."
Euclid, the Socratic philosopher, gave two genii to everyone, a point on which Lucilius, in his Satires, insists we cannot be informed.
To the genius, therefore, so powerful through the whole course of one's life, yearly sacrifices were offered. As the birth of every mortal was a peculiar object of his guardian genius's solicitude, the marriage bed was called the genial bed (lectus genialis). The same invisible patron was also supposed to be the author of joy and hilarity, hence a joyous life was called a genial life (genialis vita).
There is a curious passage relating to the functions of the Greek demons in the Symposium of Plato, in which he has Socrates state: "… from it [i.e., the agency of genii] proceed all the arts of divination, and all the science of priests, with respect to sacrifices, initiations, incantations, and everything, in short, which relates to oracles and enchantments. The deity holds no direct intercourse with man; but, by this means, all the converse and communications between gods and men, whether asleep or awake, take place; and he who is wise in these things is a man peculiarly guided by his genius. "
Plato highlights the connection between demonology and magic, an association characteristic of the romances of the East if the jinns of the Moslems are compared to the genii of the Platonists.
A modern understanding of the term genius is well illustrated by F. W. H. Myers in his book Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death (1903): "Genius should be regarded as a power of utilising a wider range than other men can utilise of faculties in some degree innate in all; a power of appropriating the results of subliminal mentation to subserve the supraliminal stream of thought; so that an 'inspiration of genius' will be in truth a subliminal up-rush, an emergence into the current of ideas which the man is consciously manipulating of other ideas which he has not consciously originated but which have shaped themselves beyond his will, in profounder regions of his being."
Theodore Flournoy said he considered Myers's chapter on genius one of the most remarkable and strongest of the work because it made one feel the insufficiency of all the naturalistic explanations advanced up to that time.
In The Road to Immortality (1932), claimed to be composed of posthumous communications from Myers through the mediumship of Geraldine Cummins, the discarnate "Myers" expands on genius with reference to the idea of a group-soul:
"If a certain type of psyche is continually being evolved in the one group, you will find that eventually that type, if it be musical, will have a musical genius as its representative on earth. It will harvest all the tendencies in those vanished lives, and it will then have the amazing unconscious knowledge that is the property of genius."
The often-quoted dictums of Jane Ellice Hopkins, "Genius only means an infinite capacity for taking pains," and Thomas Edison, "genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration," draw attention to the phenomenon that prolonged absorption and study often result in an inspirational leap of awareness and insight. Many new concepts and discoveries have taken place in this way. This is comparable to the mystic's experience in which meditation leads to enhancement of consciousness, sometimes to ecstatic conditions of so-called cosmic consciousness.
Sources:
Cummins, Geraldine. The Road to Immortality. London: Ivor Nicholson & Watson, 1933.
Galton, Francis. Hereditary Genius. London, 1869. Reprint, London: Watts, 1950.
Kenmore, Dallas. The Nature of Genius. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1972.
Lombroso, Cesare. The Man of Genius. London: Scott, 1889.
Storr, Anthony. The School of Genius. London: A. Deutsch, 1988.
